19. George H. W. Bush’s “Other Wife”
President George H. W. Bush usually kept his mistresses far away, but that changed when he encountered Jennifer Fitzgerald, a 42-year-old short, blond, and pretty divorcee. She worked as an assistant to one of Gerald Ford’s aides, and Bush was smitten when he met her. In 1974, Bush was appointed ambassador to China, and he had Fitzgerald join him there as his secretary. He told friends that he chose her to act as a buffer between him and Henry Kissinger’s State Department, but few bought it. As one embassy staffer put it: “I don’t know what skills she brought to the job. She certainly couldn’t type“.
Fitzgerald arrived in Beijing on December 5, 1974, and the next day, Bush took her for a twelve-day “diplomatic conference” in Hawaii. Unlike his previous affairs, which Barbara Bush had turned a blind eye to, the situation with Fitzgerald was more than a dalliance. As described by a close family friend: “It wasn’t just another woman. It was a woman who came to exert enormous influence over George for many, many years. … She became, in essence, his other wife … his office wife“. Barbara burned her love letters with Bush, which she had treasured since World War II, and went into a severe depression.
